The BCM Myanmar ministry team believes in dreaming big. A small nation in southeast Asia, Myanmar has a population of fifty million, largely Buddhist, that has been plagued by ongoing civil war for decades. BCM Myanmar’s vision is to see one million children come to Jesus Christ within the next thirty years and three hundred new churches planted. That takes…

Add a cup of Bible teaching, a pinch of games, a dash of baking. and what do you get? BCM Ireland’s Easter Cookery Camp. BCM ministry personnel in Ireland have long felt a burden for the local community living around their camp and conference centre, Castledaly Manor, in a rural district of central Ireland. Castledaly manager Nathan Dancey and his wife Jenna had been witness to the positive value of a…

When BCM missionaries Pat Govender and Dr. Djawotho Kisa arrived in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 2014 to hold training seminars for children’s ministry leaders, one constant plea they received was to please come back so other churches could receive training as well. That same year, the Église du Christ au Congo (ECC), or Church of Christ in the Congo, an…

How did a farmer’s daughter from New York state end up in Thailand? By a long and circuitous route of faithful service in God’s kingdom. Barbara Van Valkenburg’s spiritual journey traces back to two women who invested time in picking up Barbara and her seven siblings for church and teaching their Sunday school class. Their faithfulness in turn inspired Barb with the vision of reaching…

I am not a missionary, but I grew up in a missions-minded family. Whenever a missionary would visit our church, they would be our guests for Sunday dinner. We listened to their exciting stories and tried to imagine what it was like to be a missionary, especially if they were from Africa. In Sunday School, my teacher would have us take an offering each week for missionary projects like…

BCM Africa director John Peter needs only to remember his own childhood to recognize the urgency of missions. Sometime back while speaking at a conference in Canada, he had the privilege of meeting the missionary lady who led him to Christ at a Bible camp when he was nine-years-old. “I thanked that Canadian congregation for investing in sending…

What is the impact of touching the life of one child with the gospel of Jesus Christ? BCM missionary Joyce Murray was enjoying the 80th Anniversary celebration banquet for Bible Centered Ministries, International when BCM president emeritus Bob Evans and his wife Corrie stopped by to tell her of a friend who’d attended the banquet with them. Did Joyce remember Trista (Pike) Steinhauer? Of course! Even after more than…

“How can I not go? Just like Queen Esther, if I live, I live, but if I perish, I perish. I must do God’s work.” So writes “Aunty Aida”, a Nigerian Christian who teaches BCM’s children’s ministry training course In Step with the Master Teacher in regions dominated by Islam. Her courageous attitude could be echoed by BCM Asia/Africa regional director, Stephen King, and his wife, Jane, recently returned from their own latest…

Mrs. Joyce Solomon, area director of BCM Tamil Nadu, was walking down the street after having finished a school-time Bible class, when sudden a female police constable approached and grabbed her by the hand. Mrs. Solomon was taken aback, since she’d done nothing wrong that could have drawn police attention. But the police constable was smiling as she asked, “Don’t you…

“When I came to this country, I brought all my saints [statuettes of various saints believed to answer prayer] with me in my suitcase,” shares one attendee of a Spanish-language Bible study taught by Carlos and Marion Odicio of BCM USA’s new Hispanic Ministry outreach. “Now that I’ve found Jesus, I don’t need them anymore.” Carlos and Marion Odicio founded BCM ministry in Lima, Peru, in 1994. Twenty-plus years later, that ministry is reaching thousands of…

The second Asia Pacific Youth Congress (APYC2), held in Bali, Indonesia, from October 17-20, 2016, brought together youth leaders, mentors, and children’s ministry directors from twenty different nations across Asia and the Pacific. Among its seven hundred-plus participants was a team from BCM Philippines. The event’s objective was to raise up Christ-like nurturers who will disciple the next generation. Why? Because discipleship is the…

Each country served by BCM International faces its own unique challenges. Some countries have artillery pointing at their borders. Some missionaries face incarceration and great persecution for sharing their faith. In Canada, where BCM recently celebrated…

Much of the West Indies island chain’s population reached the Caribbean during the late 17th and 18th centuries on slave ships from West Africa, destined for labor in tobacco and sugar plantations. So how does a West Indies pastor’s wife end up back across the Atlantic in Cameroon, West Africa? Simply put, to share the love of Jesus. Orementa Murphy grew up in…

A two-acre plot in the outskirts of Kapsabet, a town in western Kenya, holds just two lonely buildings, one constructed of wood and iron sheets, the other just wood. These small buildings stand vacant all week until Sunday morning when the quiet is shattered by Kenyan Christians gathering for church services, their songs of praise echoing off iron sheets and resounding through the surrounding countryside. While the rest of the…

The church in Cuba is alive and vibrant!” expressed a previous BCM World article and a recent BCM Peru ministry team to Cuba can testify to that truth. BCM missionaries Marion Odico, Jonatan Odicio and Francisco Barnuevo first traveled from Peru to Cuba in 2014 to hold children’s ministry training in a town called Moa. Among approximately forty trainees was the children’s pastor of the host church in…

How to find godly, committed counselors and staff for the next generation of camp ministry? Simple for BCM Poland missionaries John and Dasia Abramovich. You raise them. BCM International partners in Poland with a children’s ministry organization, Miłość Edukacja Dojrzałość. Dasia has served with MED since its founding in 1990, just months after the fall of…

When the 2016 Michigan-Seven team touched down in Bolivia’s lowland city of Santa Cruz on June 19th, it was hardly a first visit for team leader Sue Sanderson. Sue has taught BCM Bible clubs and ministered at BCM affiliate camp Pine Ridge Bible Camp (originally Jack and Jill Bible Club Camp) in Cedar Springs, MI, for more than 30 years. She first visited Bolivia in 1990, at which time she taught the first BCM children’s ministry leadership…

REFUGEE! Recent global events have caused a tsunami of refugees to hit the shores of many countries, including my own birth nation, the United States. Probably none of us wants or expects to be a refugee. But several months ago it occurred to me that I am indeed one of those refugees who had to flee their homeland as an act of self-preservation. For me, it was my adopted…

Sri Lanka’s worst disaster since the 2004 tsunami started unexpectedly when Tropical Storm Roanu arrived May 15-16, 2016, weeks ahead of the normal monsoon season. Within 48 hours, the heaviest rains in a quarter-century had dumped over 300 millimeters (approximately one foot) into already overflowing rivers. Resulting landslides have left entire villages buried in mud. With rains continuing, hundreds of thousands have driven from their homes. The heaviest struck has…

In October, 2015, a fundamentalist Hindu mob attacked a BCM church in Begaipeda village in northern India’s Jharkhand State. The church had been growing steadily since its founding in 2010, and the believers had constructed a small sanctuary on a piece of land donated by a church member. The mob’s target was the pastor, BCM church-planting missionary, Rev. Sunil Munda. When they couldn’t find him, they attacked…

The island nation of Madagascar, located off Africa’s southeastern coast, practices what is known locally as fihavanana, a term encompassing concepts of unity, brotherhood, and general peace. To the Malagasy [i.e., Madagascar ethnicity] people, this means having strong relationships with others and taking care of the world around them. Malagasy native and country director for BCM International’s newest ministry field…

“Dear God, bless Hungary. Help the Hungarian people come to know Christ as Savior. Send missionaries to their country to bring them the gospel.” When Damaris Grauer and Birgit Karsch joined the Eastern Europe missions prayer band at their Bible school in western Germany to pray for Hungary and other Eastern European nations, then just emerging from Communist rule, the last answer to their prayers they expected was for…

The neighboring countries of Ecuador and Peru share many things in common. The friendliness of their people. The Pacific Ocean. The same national language. A similar Latin culture. More pertinently, the same great need to reach one of their nations’ most valuable resources—their children. This shared need was the motivation behind a joint Peru-Ecuador training event that took place in the coastal city of Guayaquil, Ecuador, February…

While BCM ministry in the Eastern European country of Ukraine has existed since 1993, political circumstances have recently changed, re-shaping ministries to meet needs of the Ukrainian people in their present circumstances. Because of ongoing conflict with Russia, some ministries such as the Mariupol orphanage have required temporary relocation. Also due to the conflict…

BCM missionary Lois Lass was just turning thirteen years old the last time she’d set foot in her birthplace—and her heart home. Lois was born in the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) to missionary parents Ray and Wanda Florence. Lois remembers her childhood growing up along Africa’s Great Lakes, both in the Congo and neighboring Burundi, as idyllic. “It was a happy time in my life, and I didn’t see the…